SAP’s India growth deeply intertwined with trusted partner network

NITISH AGRAWAL
CHIEF PARTNER OFFICER, SAP INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

The journey of SAP in India, spanning nearly three decades, is deeply interwoven with the strength and commitment of our partner ecosystem. Our partners have played a vital and strategic role in shaping the digital transformation of Indian enterprises, particularly amid rapid shifts in technology, customer expectations, and evolving industry dynamics. Today, an overwhelming majority of our customers are served directly by partners, clearly highlighting our successful shift to a truly partner-led business model. In fact, the contribution of Indian channel partners to SAP’s India cloud business is among the highest across all our global markets.

Our expanding ecosystem has helped us grow from 55 to over 250 cities in just three years. Nearly 75–80% of our ecosystem operates in the midmarket segment, driving net-new customer acquisition, cloud adoption, and business growth. We are also enabling transformation in PSUs and government departments through strong partner-led execution, while building a mini ecosystem for agile digital natives.

Through SAP BTP’s GenAI Hub, hundreds of partners are co-innovating on industry-specific and domain-relevant use cases, supported by global alliances with AWS, Google Cloud, IBM, Mistral, and academic institutions like Stanford and UC Berkeley. We’ve invested in robust digital infrastructure and launched the Partner Competency Framework to optimize marketing, sales, training, and customer support costs, while empowering partners to lead end-to-end customer engagement through strategic programs like Partner-Led Territories.